Astroturf on Social Media and Wikipedia manipulation

Astroturf on Social Media and Wikipedia manipulation. Media manipulation is not a new topic, in fact, many people have fought against it and are even doing so as we speak.

Why is this such an important topic to write on and to create awareness about?

Because not only are the people being miss-led on a global scale by mainstream media (msm) like TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc… But also, and ever more increasingly, through social media. Social media has become infiltrated by paid professionals who work for certain corporations whose only interest it is to diminish every negative comment about them and to portray a positive picture of themselves to manipulate your opinion.

Often those paid professionals are using terms as quack, nut, liar, conspiracy, etc… to discredit those who oppose the corporations or political parties they are working for. The rabbit hole goes deep, very deep!

In the following eye-opening TEDx talk, veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson shows how astroturf, or fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort media messages, and how Wikipedia has become compromised by those same movements.

By now you probably have started to raise 1 eyebrow. Let us continue and show you some more “awakening” information on how you are being manipulated.

Noam Chomsky, the distinguished American philosopher, political activist and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has compiled a list of the ten most powerful and efficacious strategies used by “masters of the world” to establish a manipulation of the population through the media.

The strategies are so well-elaborated that even the countries with the best educational systems, succumb to the power and terror of those mafias. Many things are reported in the news but few are explained.

The journalistic tendency to balance stories with two opposing views leads to a tendency to ‘build stories around a confrontation between protagonists and antagonists’ (Ricci 1993: 95). Issues such as garbage and sewage sludge only get coverage, despite their importance, when there is a fight over the siting of a landfill or incinerator and the coverage is then on the ‘anger and anguish of affected citizens, or the conflicting claims of corporate spokesmen, government regulators and environmental activists’ rather than the issues and technical background to them (Gersh 1992: 16).

The job of media is not to inform, but to misinform: Divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or a continuous flood of distractions and insignificant information.

Journalists who have access to highly placed government and corporate sources have to keep them on their side by not reporting anything adverse about them or their organizations. Otherwise, they risk losing them as sources of information. In return for this loyalty, their sources occasionally give them good stories, leaks, and access to special interviews. Unofficial information, or leaks, give the impression of investigative journalism but are often strategic maneuvers on the part of those with position or power (Ricci 1993: 99). ‘It is a bitter irony of source journalism … that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the “best” sources’ (quoted in Lee and Solomon 1990: 18).

The 10 Strategies:

1. The strategy of distraction

The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.

Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology, and cybernetics.

“Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals” (quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars).

2. Create problems, then offer solutions

This method is also called “problem -reaction- solution.” It creates a problem, a “situation” referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you want to accept. For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant’s security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom.

Or create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public services.

3. The gradual strategy

Acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years.

That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s:

• the minimal state
• privatization
• precariousness
• flexibility
• massive unemployment
• wages
• do not guarantee a decent income,

…so many changes that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.

4. The strategy of deferring

Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as “painful and necessary”, gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application.

It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter.

• First, because the effort is not used immediately
• Then, because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that “everything will be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided

This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.

5. Go to the public as a little child

Most of the advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and particularly children’s intonation, often close to the weakness as if the viewer were a little child or a mentally deficient.

The harder one tries to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt a tone infantilizing.

Why?

“If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability that a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12 years or younger.” (see Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars)

6. Use the emotional side more than the reflection

Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique for causing a short circuit on rational analysis, and finally to the critical sense of the individual.

Furthermore, the use of the emotional register to open the door to the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas, desires, fears and anxieties, compulsions, or induce behaviors …

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity

Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to control and enslavement.

“The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be as poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to attain for the lower classes.” (See Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars).

8. To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity

Promote the public to believe that the fact is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and uneducated…

9. Self-blame Strengthen

To let individual blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts.

So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual auto-devaluate and guilt himself, which creates a depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its action.

And, without action, there is no revolution!

10. Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves

Over the past 50 years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites.

Thanks to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the “system” has enjoyed a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically.

The system has gotten better acquainted with the common man more than he knows himself.

This means that, in most cases, the system exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than that of individuals about themselves.

—

Not convinced yet…? How about the idea that ALL media is being controlled from the top down…?

Did it ever occur to you that news anchors from different tv stations are saying the exact same sentences? No, well then we are sure you’ll also raise that second eyebrow after watching these little clips! These are just a few examples of many available on Youtube.

A top German Journalist and Editor Dr. Udo Ulfkatte has just gone public with some shocking admissions. He basically admitted what all of us who read the alternative media have known for a long time – the entire mainstream media is totally fake! He went into a very detailed talk in this video and spilled the beans about everything! He talked about how the CIA gets control over all of the major journalists.

Please people, it is high time to think about what really matters in life! It is not the six o’clock news or the next game or soap on tv…

Look inside your hearts and see what’s in there? Re-evaluate your level of love and compassion you have for your spouse, your child, your family, your neighbor, your fellow human being in the street, anywhere! Entertain yourself with the people around you, reach out and get to know each other, go outside and meet new people and make new friends!

Don’t fall for the game “Divide an Conquer” that is being played on you. Unite and share love, compassion, food, knowledge, wealth (if you have it), etc…

SHUT DOWN YOUR TV, CANCEL YOUR CABLE, STOP READING NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES AND DON’T LISTEN TO RADIO !!!!

Educate yourselves by doing research. Don’t rely on governmental educational systems. They have NO interest in well informed and add-rem citizens they can not manipulate, on the contrary.

We can not stress this enough! It should be crystal clear by now that the people are being manipulated on a global scale!

Share this message as wide as you can, and please, don’t confine yourself to social media! Talk about it to people, help to create awareness. Don’t argue with people if they don’t believe you but motivate people to do their own research.

Let’s put an end to this media circus and wake up to our true selves, instead of letting others tell us who we are, what to do, what to eat, buy, consume.

TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE, IT IS YOURS!

I’d like to finish this post with this powerful quote:

Nobody is born a warrior.

You choose to be one when you refuse to stay seated.

You choose to be one when you refuse to back down.

You choose to be one when you stand up after getting knocked down.

You choose to be one because if not you, who?